Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
By Helen Gloege ’23
Staff Writer
It seems like only yesterday that the western United States faced droughts and fires over the summer of 2020. Now, entering the coming summer, the western U.S. and other parts of the world are facing record-breaking temperatures for days on end. While weather is not the same as climate, patterns have emerged over the past decade with heatwaves, droughts and large forest fires that indicate a changing climate. This extreme weather has become the new normal in the western U.S.
On June 16, the National Weather Service announced over 40 million people in the western U.S. were under a heat advisory or excessive heat warning. The current drought is on track to become the worst in the U.S. in at least 1,200 years. In central and northern California, temperatures are 10-20 degrees Fahrenheit above average. Record-breaking temperatures have also occurred in Salt Lake City, Denver and Billings, Montana. Phoenix has approached record highs each day in the week of June 16.
Eleven states reported triple-digit temperatures in at least one town on June 16. This heat is likely to continue for the rest of the summer, posing danger as the heat dries vegetation, heightening the risk of wildfires. The high temperatures worsen droughts in these areas as the heat and cloudless skies result in increased evaporation of water in lakes and rivers.
With heat waves comes the risk of rolling blackouts. These occur when companies cause systematic and temporary power outages to balance out the supply and demand of electricity in the market. Rolling blackouts are a last resort after a power supply shortage is identified. The heat waves have caused more people to be indoors and use air conditioning, fans or other technological devices to keep cool. The California Independent System Operator that monitors power lines in California asked residents to limit energy use to reduce strain on the state’s power supply. The Energy Reliability Council of Texas has also asked residents to conserve energy. Yet, already, Texas has experienced unexpected outages causing 2.4 million homes to lose power.
Fire danger also tends to accompany heat waves and drought. Currently, the high desert Great Basin region in Utah, Nevada and eastern Oregon is under severe threat of fires. There is also a wildfire burning near Flagstaff, Arizona, with the national forest in and around Flagstaff announcing a full closure. Colorado is currently facing six wildfires larger than 500 acres. The Robertson Draw Fire, which sparked on June 13 near the Montana-Wyoming border, is highly active due to windy, changing conditions. When a fire acts unpredictably, fighting it actively on the ground becomes almost impossible.
While the western U.S. is dealing with drought and record-breaking heat, India’s coast is facing extreme weather events putting the region at risk. During the past three years, cyclones have threatened India’s western coast. The quantity and intensity of cyclones have increased in the Arabian Sea since the 1980s, and floods have become an annual event in Mumbai since 2005. Between 1950 and 2017, there have been 285 reported flooding events, affecting 850 million people. The damage per year due to flooding has been about $3 billion. The individual events themselves are devastating, but their frequency and intensity make them even more dangerous.
With the heatwaves, fires and drought conditions happening so early, there are many concerns in the environmentalist community about the rest of the summer, as well as the years ahead. These meteorological trends have become the new normal, but they are far from natural.